Switzerland has no plans to ban sprays such as Roundup despite health warnings

The newspaper reported that the Swiss federal council said last Friday that it did not consider it necessary to ban the use of sprays containing the active ingredient glyphosate found in around 70 sprays (including Roundup) available in Switzerland. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organisation, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic in humans”. Commercialised in 1975 by Monsanto, glyphosate based sprays are now the world’s most popular weed killers. A number of proposals to ban the use of these sprays in Switzerland have been presented to the Swiss parliament over the last few weeks. France has announced the end of over the counter sales of such sprays from 2016.